Time Gone By

Dear Mom,

Grandma likes to get up early in the morning and order breakfast for me. When I roll out of bed and head for the main room of the suite, she's already sitting at the table with a book, but she's never reading. She just sits and sips her tea and stares out the window.

We've been in London only three days now, but she hasn't left the hotel yet. I go out in the morning and do my own thing—I went back to Westminster and Kensington Gardens and a few other places, but I just can't do Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square without you, or at least without Grandma so that I can watch her watch everything else—and when I come back in the afternoon the concierge (who's got nothing on Michel) has said all three days that Grandma hasn't been out. I'm worried about her.

I've stopped having conversations with you when I go places, almost. Mostly I just find a place to sit and watch people after I've done all the looking-at-things I feel like doing. It's interesting: yesterday I saw this group of boys play soccer with a pebble like it was the most important thing in the world. They even said "gooooal" (which is funnier when it's happening at the diner and you're throwing French fries in your mouth—or at Luke; how is Luke?). You're still there, I guess, in the things I tell myself, but most of the time it's quiet up in my head.

I know what I wanted this year: for things not to change. I think I was a little too successful with that. I never thought that would be a bad thing, but there you have it.

Miss you. Lots of love,

Rory.

The third afternoon that Rory returned from her solitary walking in London, she found Emily pacing in the sitting room of their suite, wringing her hands.

"Grandma, what's wrong?"

Emily looked up, her face set in anguished worry. "Oh, Rory, I'm glad you're back. Would you sit down, please?"

She let her grandmother take her by the arm and guide her to a chair. "What's going on?" she asked. "Is everything okay at home?"

"Oh, yes, everything's fine as far as I know—I don't mean to scare you, it's just—" Emily took a breath. "I'm afraid I have a terribly large favor to ask of you, Rory."

"Oh, Grandma, anything. You've been so great about this whole trip—it's been wonderful," she said.

This seemed to make Emily more upset. "Good," she said. "I was just—would you mind, terribly, if we cut our time in London short? I thought we could go back to France, perhaps Avignon, before we meet our train to Italy. Would that be all right with you?"

Rory's mouth fell open slightly. "Sure, Grandma, whatever you want to do is fine. But is it okay if I ask why?"

Emily stood up and resumed her pacing. Rory watched her from where she sat, completely unsure of how to handle herself in this situation. A discomposed grandmother was novelty to her.

"I just hate this damned city!" Emily finally said. "I hate everything about it: the smells, the sounds, the money, the hotel staff—it's just horrible." She balled up her fists and tensed; Rory would not have been surprised had she stomped her foot and bellowed from the look of her posture. "Would it completely ruin your trip?"

Rory shook her head. "Not possible," she said. "Grandma, come sit down. What's going on, really? You can tell me," she said, inclining her head in what she hoped was an encouraging and sympathetic manner.

"Oh, it's all very boring and complicated," Emily said, resting gingerly on the edge of the sofa. "You don't want to hear about any of it, my dear."

"Sure I do. You're my grandma, and you obviously are having a hard time with something, so I would like to help. You always let me come to you when I'm having a bad time," she added. "Grandma?"

Emily's eyes were distant, scanning the wall opposite as she spoke, as though she saw something moving behind the plain taupe paint. "Your grandfather and I took a trip very similar to this after we were married, you know. France, England, Italy. It was the thing to do, to tour with your husband, back then. His mother came with us, of course, and we shared a suite much like this, with her room across from ours, just like this, your room across from mine. Oh, but I loved him. As much as I hated her, I loved him. He was so good—he would take his mother out in the mornings for her walk and in the afternoon we would go out and see all the things you're supposed to see when you travel. He knew so many things, you know," she said.

Rory saw the faint traces of a smile on Emily's face, her eyes warm with remembrance that dissipated into bitterness. "Our time in London was… unpleasant. We hadn't been married long, but that basset hound he called his mother was already making noises about having someone to carry on the Gilmore name, having children. I was nothing more than a breeder. I didn't think the time was right, I wanted to be married first, to have time together, to plan and think and then to go forward when we both of us were ready. But he had already picked out the names," Emily said. "Oh, we had a terrible fight, that hairy chinned bat listening the whole time, I'm sure, grinning her wrinkly bottom off, no doubt. I packed my things, you know. I got a taxi and I went to the airport." Rory saw her grandmother's face fall slightly: she blinked and studied her hands, folded elegantly in her lap. "He didn't follow me. Not for six hours. I waited. I didn't even buy a ticket. I was so sure he would come." She sighed. "He came, though, when he thought I had already left and there was nothing more to do."

Emily looked at Rory, smiling a sad, weary smile. She put her hand to her granddaughter's face. "I forgave him, of course. And we went back to Paris and left his mother there before we went on to Italy. Things were fine after that, wonderful again." She let her hand fall, slowly. "I should have figured it out then. It would have made things so much easier," she said.

"Figured what out, Grandma?"

Emily tilted her chin up, considering the words even as she spoke. "That the old bitch was right: I am not a Gilmore." She rose and walked to the window. "Gilmores do things a certain way. Family first, always, but in name only. Protect the name, the reputation, the façade. The people inside are only a secondary consideration."

Rory tucked her hair behind her ears, smoothed her skirt nervously. After a moment, she looked up. "I don't understand."

Emily's eyes were full when she looked back. "Oh, neither do I, Rory. But your grandfather does. And he's never changed."

"Maybe he can," Rory said, her voice hopeful. "I know he loves you."

She laughed. "Oh, he does, in his own way, I suppose. And I love him, in spite of everything, and perhaps that's why this has been so painful. Everything became very clear to me the afternoon your mother came to plead for Jason and his business, how very Gilmore he is. He was ready to let her walk away just to save face. After all these years, to have her come to us, to lose it all over something like that." She turned away from the window. "People are not things, Rory; they cannot be moved around and shuffled about at will. I don't know that your grandfather understands that or that he ever will. But I am not a thing," she said. "I suppose I came to his way of thinking, after your mother was born. There couldn't be any children after her, it just wasn't possible—"

"Oh, Grandma," Rory breathed. "I had no idea."

Emily shrugged. "No one did. Your mother—oh, I wanted to throttle her so many times. She drove me around every bend she could see and when she couldn't she made up a new one. Your mother was intent on being her own person—she reinvented that Gilmore single-mindedness, but I think she made it better. I was devastated when she left, you know, and for years I held it against her, but she got on the plane and I never could."

Rory rose and walked to the window. She slipped her hand in Emily's and rested her head against her grandmother's shoulder. "Grandma?"

"Yes, darling?"

"What do you need?"

"Oh, Rory, I think I have everything I need right here," she said, squeezing Rory's hand. "You and I need to make something of this trip. I was trying to remember some things—who that girl was, I suppose, who left for the airport that day, certain things would go her way. She was not a thing when she left the hotel, you know." Emily turned her face away from Rory, saying, "but she was when she came back."

They stood in silence a long moment. Rory put her arms around Emily and held her tightly. "Okay, Grandma. Let's go." She paused. "We could check out a nude beach or two if you want."

Dear Mom,

Did you know that Grandma gets a joke? Did you know how like you she is? Or maybe, how much you're like her? In the best ways, Mom, so don't freak. I feel sorry for her, and I feel badly that I can't help her more. But it's sort of nice—we're both trying to do the same things, and at least we can help each other out.

Love, Rory.